The "Do You Think Obama Love's This Country" Got'cha Question -- It's A Left / Right Issue

I attended the dinner in New York City last week during which Rudy Giuliani — an unexpected last-minute crasher — claimed President Obama “doesn’t love America.” The people there reacted the way you would when an angry uncle explodes at the Thanksgiving dinner table: with embarrassed silence. I had been told the dinner was off-the-record, so I didn’t write up his comments, but by midnight, the story was everywhere.

John Fund, National Review, 22 Feb. 2015

The left likes to sneer at “love of country” comments and, indeed, uses them to marginalize people who make them as tea party nutters. Their criticism rests on two unspoken propositions -- "How DARE You?" and "look at how stupid and unsophisticated this idiot is." This articulation of contempt does impact on those low information types in the middle, unfortunately. Proof of that is how quickly the left was to question Republican presidential candidates on whether they agreed with Guiliani. Dana Milbank at WaPo is making a cottage industry out of asking Got'cha questions of this type to Scott Walker than labeling him unfit for failing to answer.

Let me answer the question. One cannot be a leftie and love any country within Western civiization, all being based on the Judeo-Christian ethic and capitalism in its varied forms. Period. Lefties look to the history of their country and see it as either intrinsicaly evil as a whole or at least at its foundational level, because it was, ostensibly, founded on oppression and exploitation.

So how does a sophisticated leftie define love of country? It is not based on the past, it is based on a vision of the future. What the left has is a utopian “social justice” vision (Marx 2.0) for ______ (insert name of Western country here) that they love, and of course they love being in a society where they can gain the power to move it in that direction. Indeed, it’s their raison d’etre.

When a non-leftist like Guiliani says that he loves his country, he is basing that on it’s imperfect history, looking back realisticly and saying that the good has far outweighed the bad, and there is intense pride in being a part of it, warts and all. Questionable incidents are teaching points, not unforgivable sins that forever stain and corrupt.

Want an example, look to the U.S. Constitution. Most on the right revere the Constitution as being greatest foundation for liberty in the history of man. It was imperfect at the time, and in light of slavery and other ills, aspirational, but without the Constitution, we never would have joined and then advanced to correct those ills. That is not the way the left sees it. The battle cry of the race hustlers is the unforgivable sin of slavery and agreement to the Three/Fifths Compromise. The battle cry of the modern feminist movement is to see the Constitution as merely another document ensconcing patriarchy. How many on the left would like to see the Constitution done away with as being anachronistic and an impediment to progress? And don't forget a few years ago, when Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg recommended that any nation drafting a new Constitution not look to the U.S.

Unfortunately, few on the right pose their love of country comments in full historical context, and no one on the left is ever asked a love of country question posed in the proper context, such as “Looking back on all of our history, all that has happened, do you love this country? Actually that last bit would really trip up most leftists, since they don’t know their county’s history beyond the grossly superficial — just enough to chant slogans. Obama is the poster child of this group.

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The Catholic Church & The Left

(Photoshop H/T American Digest)

I have long been intending to post on why the modern left and many in the Catholic Church have made common cause, at least over the past eight decades. The base of the left has been defined since the inception of socialism by their antipathy towards Christianity, thus making the voluntary union of the Church with the left a dichotomy. On a related note, it is capitalism that has brought the greatest benefits to all people, from the poorest on up, in our nation and the world. Yet many in religious orders seem to agree with the left that capitalism, operating from enlightened self interest, is less desirable than the left's model of forced redistribution.

I have long suspected that the answers to both of the above issue has much to do with the lifestyle of clergy and monks of the Catholic Church. It is the closest thing to a successful experiment in the Marxist model as likely ever to be found on this earth. Thus it becomes understandable that many in the Church, not seeing the larger reality, would in fact feel an affinity for their would-be executioners. Many in the Church do not seem to distinguish between voluntary acts of charity and expropriation of property by the police power of the state. They do not recognize that capitalism creates far more wealth to the benefit of all - thus making charity possible - while socialism produces much less wealth and results in far less charity, with the State assuming the role of charitable institutions. But on top of all of this, most importantly, many in the Church have been willfully blind about the ultimate goal of the socialist left - to remove religion from society in order to make the state the ultimate arbiter of morality. The left has not exactly been hiding the ball on this one.

While I intended to pontificate on this at some length, I see that a Catholic Priest, Father Zhuhisdorf, has already addressed many of these issues in his blog. I defer to Father Z:

Ask everybody and they’ll all agree it’s a good thing priests don’t run the world.

I agree with this view.

I also believe it’s even better that members of religious orders don’t run the world, whether they are Sisters of Mercy or, lemme think, Jesuits … or some other kind of religious.

Why?

Religious don’t live in the real world.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe firmly that many religious do alot of good for the world, but they don’t live in it. . . .

For example, unlike diocesan priests, individual religious don’t pay income taxes. Religious don’t worry about unemployment, health care, food, housing and nursing care when they are aged, or the cost of their funerals. Their religious communities take care of all that. Religious contribute all of what little (or in some cases much) money they earn from their apostolates into a common fund that is administered by their superiors. That common fund takes care of the needs of all community members.

That’s why I get a little edgy hearing religious talking about social justice, universal health care and other federal mandates and entitlements.

The idea that religious have of the state is far too analogous to that of a religious community.

Time and time again religious who pronounce themselves on social issues demonstrate that they think of nation-states, such as the USA, in religious terms. Nation-states are their communities writ large, in which everybody helps everybody else, and in which goods are distributed not on the basis of property rights, but instead, as in the Acts of the Apostles, “distribution is made to each according to his need” (Acts 4:35).

According to this model, wealthy Americans should “pay their fair share” in federal and state income taxes in order to help those who are poor.

I happen to agree with that sentiment.

The wealthy should help the poor. Jesus taught that. The Church Fathers taught that long before modern popes wrote encyclicals (just read St. John Chrysostom or St. Augustine of Hippo).

But what Jesus, the Acts of the Apostles and the Church Fathers all had in common in this regard is that they were talking about voluntary charity. They were not talking about the state.

The state is a modern institution and it is based upon coercion.

If you don’t believe that, go and break a law and see what happens to you.

The power of the state may in some places derive from the consent of the governed, but in no place do individual members or even the majority, consent to each and every act of the state.

If you don’t believe that, try stopping an abortion and see what happens to you.

When the government collects income taxes, it is not passing the basket at church, asking you to perform a voluntary act of charity (pace William Buffett): it is seizing your property. If you don’t hand over your property, the state will garnish your wages and/or confiscate and sell your house and goods. It may also put you in prison.

Where’s the voluntary in that?

In the national conversation Americans are currently having over the federal government takeover of health care, what gets obscured is the distinction between the public sector and the voluntary sector, that is, between the state and the Church.

It’s the role of members of any church to practice charity. The state’s role in our lives is, with our consent, coercive. But its coercive power should be limited.

If you allow the distinction between the political and religious spheres to be blurred, and if you begin romantically to think of the state as a kind of big religious community, you will end up thinking just like Mussolini: the state should own everything and provide you with all your needs.

When religious behave like this we call them a community.

When states behave like this we call them fascist.

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The Left's Efforts To Control Education

Education, Education, Education . . .

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

– quotes from Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

As I worte in a post earlier this year, "the acceptance, and indeed, ascendancy of socialism across most of the Western world is a testament to the strategy of Lenin and his progeny - to control the education of children." Ceding the educational system to the left is, perhaps, the most fundamentel failing of our nation.

In order to control the education of our young, it is incumbent on the left to influence, if not control, the teachers of our children. Thus we see people such as Bill Ayers making it their life's work to "teach the teachers." All of this ilk propose a curriculum that emphasizes the teaching of "social justice," a toxic mix combining the socialism, multiculturalism and identity politics of the far left. It is almost always coupled with a deemphasis on history.

There can be no doubt that the left has largely succeeded in this effort. The vast majority of those in the education profession identify themselves as left wing. The effect on our education system has been devastating. As summed up by Robert Martin, publishing in "Business First,"

As many as 20 percent of Americans are functionally illiterate, and our high school math and science achievement test scores rank near the bottom of industrialized nations.

But the victory for the left has not yet been complete and the left's efforts to destroy any last vestiage of heretical thought continues unabated. The most recent example comes from the Univ. of Minnesotta, where College of Education was considering adopting a litmus test to screen out any who would not fully adopt the "social justice" curriculum.

This from WND, with a hat tip to Crusader Rabbit:

A program proposed at the University of Minnesota would result in required examinations of teacher candidates on "white privilege" as well as "remedial re-education" for those who hold the "wrong" views, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

. . . "If the Race, Culture, Class, and Gender Task Group achieves its stated goals, the result will be political and ideological screening of applicants, remedial re-education for those with the 'wrong' views and values, [and] withholding of degrees from those upon whom the university's political reeducation efforts proved ineffective."

. . . Among the issues discussed in the plans are requirements that teachers would be able to instruct students on the "myth of meritocracy" in the United States, "the history of demands for assimilation to white, middle-class, Christian meanings and values," and the "history of white racism."

The demands appear to be similar to those promoted earlier at the University of Delaware. . . .

You can read the entire horror story here. There are many things that need to happen in our schools. Curriculum needs to be returned to content neutrality, with the social justice and left wing advocacy stripped from the class rooms. Students need to learn the basic skills, history, economics and financial management. Social justice and advocacy for any particular philosophy is a parent's job. How do we get to something akin to this, given the current state of our education system? I don't know, but I am sure of one thing, Lenin was right. We fail to figure out how to stop this insidious march at our own peril - as well as that of our children.

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Interesting Posts From Around The Web - 25 April 2008

The interesting posts of the day, all below the fold

Art: Music, Hans Bauldun Grien, 1529
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Stop the ACLU tries their hand at creating Pelosi-esque biblical quotations.

Transterrestrial Musings ponders the incredible policy disaster of the ethanol program. Interestingly, they note a scientific advance that may provide us with an alternative for using agricultural land and crops for the creation of ethanol. The rush to adopt alternative energy is problematic in that many alternative forms of energy are far less reliable or are, for other reasons, far more problematic than originally thought. In this regard, Deleware Crumudgeon notes that Texas is learning now about all the problems associated with making wind turbines a significant piece of their power generating scheme.

Villagers With Torches discusses the real danger posed by William Ayers to our country. It is in his pushing a radical left "social justice" curriculum into our grade school systems – something which the right should be fighting tooth and nail. As VWT states, "The next time Obama--the candidate who purports to be our next "education president"--discusses education on the campaign trail, it would be nice to hear what he thinks of his Hyde Park neighbor's vision for turning the nation's schools into left-wing indoctrination centers."

At Blonde Sagacity, commentary on possibly the most asinine oped of the political season, a British op-ed claiming that America is simply too racist for a black president. It is sophomoric and delusional anti-Americanism. Right Truth hits the nail on the head. "Race doesn't matter to [conservatives] -- give us a qualified man OR woman of any race, and we will be more than happy to support them with our time, money and votes. It's about the PERSON, not the color of their skin." As Discriminations notes, someone needs to pass the message to Joe Klein.

Barking Moonbats uses a Time magazine prop to show the application of math to modern politics, demonstrating that two halves make "a hole." Heh. This type of lesson is important because, as pointed out by No Oil for Pacifists, our liberal media has a real problem with basic math.

KG at Crusader Rabbit is distinctly unimpressed by the nonsensical musings of a Harvard Professor whose specialty is "’post-colonial studies,’ i.e., a reader-proof species of anti-Western multicultural claptrap." This is the second Harvard Prof I have been exposed to in the past month - Orlando Patterson being the other - whose intellectual prowess is, to put it tactfully, lacking.

April 25 is Anzac Day, when our cousins to the West honor their fallen soldiers. John Ray posts an explanation at a Western Heart. MK posts a poem for the occasion written by a 12 year old boy that is exceptional.

France is not so much policing its Muslim population as it is using military raids to enforce some order.

At Ankle Biting Pundits, a telling juxtaposition of two vastly different reports on the same McCain visit. There’s the upbeat local news, then there is the agenda journalism coming out of the MSM spin cycle.

At Jammie Wearing Fools, Supreme Court Justice Scalia has a message for the morons (with video) – its time to get over the Florida recount.

There is a disconnect between reality and the MSM Iraq narrative. It is tough to reconcile MSM reports with the reality of Iraqi refugees returning in droves.

Seraphic Secret has a series of exceptional posts on the Muslim uprising in Algeria over half a century ago.

Gay Patriot has an interesting post on Dutch gays and the limits of tolerance.

On the cultural corner, Pen and Spindle ponders the development of the romance novel and famous authors of the genre who are still relevant. And also blogging on themes of history and literature is Dave in Boca with an exceptional post.

ABC did very shoddy journalism if not outright fabrication in their recent story claiming that guns available in America were fueling the drug wars in Mexico. Confederate Yankee has the story.

A point worth emphasizing at the Common Room, that civil liberties are for all. It is, at times, hard to keep that elementary point in perspective.

The Midnight Sun ponders the case of Brigitte Bardot and the unfortunate overlap of racism and anti-jihadism in parties labled right-wing. She rightly notes a looming the danger to the anti-jihad movement if they do not seperate themselves from the racists.

Reality is usually spun a full 180 degrees when it comes to the UN and anything to do with Israel. Meryl Yourish has an excellent post on the topic. But, as Rightwing Conspiracy notes, the people at the UN are all on the invite list for former President Carter.

Since the partisan dems cannot force a legislated surrender in Iraq with the next bill to fund the Iraq war, they are changing tack and larding the bill with pork and vastly expanded Democratic pet projects. These people truly are despicable.

From Consul at Arms, reports that the State Dept. is about to issue guidance requiring employees to stop using the term jihad are, as of yet, unsubstantiated.

From the Jawa Report, the problems in Pakistan continue to grow as the government tries yet again to gain peace with the terrorists in their midst by granting concessions. In the words of Churchill, this is feeding the alligator in the hopes that it will eat you last.

Root causes of social ills and common sense prescriptions at Liberty Corner.

BDS and 9-11 have been very bad for Hollywood’s bottom line.

Did you ever wonder how to spot a Persian prostitute?

The Shield of Achilles sees clear of evidence of Britain voluntarily submerging its anglo-saxon identity in response to Islamists. Britian is being led by the socialists into oblivion.

Finally, an answer to that burning question, "what’s the deal with all those medieval midgets?"

"C’mon baby. Moo like a cow." (shiver).

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